Monday, June 23, 2014

It's about a week until our paint jobs design competition will be closed. We are still receiving some great entries from you which are reflected on the World of Trucks Editor's Pick section. We are really enjoying the images you have created. It's always incredibly hard to pick only a few winners from so many good submissions. So we have decided to increase the number of people to receive the final prize from 5 to 10.

Now, while we are all waiting for Euro Truck Simulator 1.11 update - which is still in testing (right now we have to iron out the physics adjustments) - let us show you a bunch of images from the other continent. It's a reminder that the second team at SCS is working really hard on the American Truck Simulator world:

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Today we have another dose of info and images from the upcoming Euro Truck Simulator 2 version 1.11 update for you.

There are several additional features simulation fans may enjoy:

Tempomat (Cruise control) received an additional mapping. Now it is possible to map the keys/buttons on the controller of your choice to increase or decrease speed, in addition to just having enable/disable hotkey. This should make cruise control act closer to what the real thing does.

We have also achieved more realistic timing for the air brake sound. Retarder indicator is lit during automatic retarder usage, and you can now configure the maximum steering angle in game options.

With the Seat Adjuster feature, we have paid more attention to side mirrors. While moving your head in the cabin, the side mirrors are now adjusting their perspective of the world rendering. It took us a while to work this out, but in the end effort had paid off with the realistic mirror perception. This should be even more noticeable to the lucky few who are using head tracking gear like TrackIR, or with head-tracking enabled virtual reality sets.

In additional little touch - now you can sell a garage or relocate your headquarters to another city.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Let's continue previewing even more items that you can expect to experience in the upcoming Euro Truck Simulator 2 update to ver. 1.11. This update is under extensive testing now, and no, we still don't have a release date to announce, other than when it's done.

Today's post will be illustrated with images captured while testing deliveries around some of the new map areas: close to the city Klagenfurt am Wörthersee and the border between Italy and Austria.

As with all previous updates lumping together several months of continual development, the new update will touch pretty much every aspect of the game: physics, AI, simulation, and gameplay refinements.

Speaking of physics: We have added support for sway bar simulation. Refining the composition of truck suspension has given us more control over truck and trailer stability. We have also recalculated the center of gravity of all cargoes, achieving more individual behavior of the whole rig depending on what is being transported. Now if you apply too much vigor during cornering, flipping the trailer is a more likely possibility, especially for particular loads. At the same time, we still need to keep in mind that the game must be playable for people without a truck driver's license and experience, so it's about finding the right balance between providing simulation fidelity and giving the player assistance during driving.

There was also some work done to improve collisions of player's truck and AI vehicles, or situations when the truck is scrubbing the railing or other surface - vehicles now have more realistic inertia post-crash. Finally, we have re-created all scratch and crash sounds in the game. Remember our Demolition day?

On topic of sounds, while we have much more ambitious plans to improve our sound system in a considerable way in the future, we have finally listened to your feedback concerning imbalance between interior and exterior sounds, and provided a stop gap solution. For this update, where needed, we have altered and equalized the sound volume of in-cabin engine sounds and external engine sounds for all trucks.

Friday, June 13, 2014

In a recent blog post
we have shown you a few things which are coming with the next
major Euro Truck Simulator 2 update, including three new cities and the Seat
Adjustment feature.

Venice driving

Another feature is worth mentioning - displaying current road speed limit in Route Advisor, similar as it's available in common car GPS devices. Our Route Advisor tries to be even smarter about it - it will show *truck specific* speed limits - our game is about trucks after all. So limits for normal cars must be in some places capped by the country's truck speed maximum allowed. This feature is optional, so you can track speed limits on your own if you prefer, and hide speed limit Route Advisor icon in game options.

There were also some changes in the game user interface. The UI received a facelift to clean up its look a bit and make it fresher. This is for example what the game's "desktop" UI hub will look like:

During testing we took some more images of the new areas. We'll be showing them all over a series of blog posts. Let us start with the approach to Venice and some shots from inside the city:

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Brazil's economy depends to a large extent on truck transportation. Truck manufacturers from all over the world are competing for the Brazilian market intensely. Brazil is a big country, and it has come a long way to becoming a major global economical power.

So obviously it is not a coincidence that we have a lot of players playing and buying our truck sims in Brazil. There is a very strong fan community there, many people making mods, uploading YouTube movies, sending us e-mails with suggestions. Even though there is a language barrier for us at SCS to understand what our games' players at the various community websites are talking about, we understand that this is a country with a big potential for our games in the future, and that we should pay more attention to it.

As a way to say "thanks" to our fans in Brazil, and also to celebrate the upcoming World Cup football championship just starting in Brazil, we are releasing a new truck paint job pack for Euro Truck Simulator 2 today. Have fun!

Monday, June 9, 2014

Currently we are hard at work testing and finalizing data and code for the next Euro Truck Simulator 2 update. There is a lot of stuff coming into it, some notable features visible on the surface, also many changes under the hood, including several months of tweaks of car AI code. We are working in "when it's done" mode - we don't have a specific release date for it to announce. If testing confirms that we are in good shape, we would like to have the update out before the Summer really kicks in, but don't take it for granted.

We have already shown you the work-in-progress Seat Adjustment feature earlier. It has since been further improved to get a little extra flexibility with more camera controls.

Thanks to contribution from our friends at Heavy Load Studios in Poland, we are adding 3 new cities: Venice, Graz, and Klagenfurt to the ETS2 world. This extension of the map will be a free part of the update for all players. The new roads comprise a lot of kilometers to explore.

Here are some countryside shots from this map expansion as a little teaser:

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Here we are, driving over new roads somewhere in the Nordics. Maybe you want to take a small peek, too?

Every time we set to work on a new world expansion, production logic would dictate that we should restrain ourselves to good-enough quality and just get the job done. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of players out there who always want more, and as fast as possible. There is definitely a very vocal part of the fan community showing lots of impatience with us.

Yet every single time, the desire to improve upon our previous work is stronger. The art and design team's push to raise the bar puts the pressure on the programming team, too. There is always the priority to improve our tool-chain, to improve the way we build the world, and not to lose performance even if we populate the world with richer content...

Our goals for the upcoming major world expansion is more efficient rendering, more impressive and true-to-life environments...

As before releasing Euro Truck Simulator 2, and before releasing Going East!, our bet is that our fans and customers are going to reward our ambition to ever improve. Even if it means that it's quite hard to get a reasonable estimate on when the work is going to be finished, as our grumbling publishing partners would attest! ;)

Monday, June 2, 2014

Our recent Flip Paint Designs mini-DLC got extra attention from Paul at DaSquirrelsNuts. Paul is probably the most loyal YouTuber and streamer in SCS Software's truck sim community; apparently still finding it interesting to cover our game and the mods scene even a year and a half after the game was released. Often up to two thousand people are tuning every week it to his Sunday Night Trucking twitch streams!

A few months ago, SCS Software donated a bunch of Euro Truck Simulator 2 keys to Gaming For Good. This is a site created by Athene, a prominent professional YouTuber and gamer, a part of his quest to make the world a better place. All donations on the site go to Save the Children charity. We just received a link to a very touching personal thank you from him...

SCS Software

Take a look under the hood! SCS Software - makers of vehicle simulation games including 18 Wheels of Steel Series, Bus Driver, and Euro Truck Simulator. Currently working hard on Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator.